Tuesday, July 26, 2011

52 WEEKS OF GENEALOGY -EMPLOYMENT

My first job started early, I was in charge of watching my brothers. I never baby sat for pay, I was just was not interested in watching children.

After high school graduation I did not know what I wanted to do, and actually no one ever sat me down and asked “Claudia, what are your career goals?” That includes the guidance counselor, who to this day, I considered totally useless.

That summer after graduation I got a job with WOOLWORTH 5 & 10 STORE My job was waitressing and selling snow cones from a machine which was placed outside the store. Woolworths is the store on the right with the red letters. From the cars I would imagine it was in the late 50’s or early 60’s

*I found this image on Google Images, but do not know the credit of this picture. Published by Imperial Greeting Card Company.

The snow cones were 5 cents. The ice was kept in a insulated bin and you inserted the ice and ground into small pieces and then topped it with flavored syrup. The syrup came in three or four flavors including cherry and orange.

I spent the summer sitting outside and watching the passers by. I do not remember the relentless heat we have today. After the summer was over I was waitressing inside as the lunch counter. Coffee was a dime, hot dogs a quarter as well as ice cream sundaes. What I remember mostly was you pulled a piece of paper for the banana splits and they ranged from five cents to a quarter.

I also remember the store manager, who never spoke except to criticize…..another thing from that experience that irked me was that he called everyone by their first name but insisted that he be called MR. _______ It is funny that it still irks me to this day. There also was the fact that some customers treated you rudely because you were waitressing.

After a few months working at this job my biggest enlightenment came to me. I was not going to spend the rest of my life doing this. I made a decision and went to Nursing School. I guess I can say that one of the things it taught me was to get out of there and on with my life doing something more meaningful.

1 comment:

Your story brings back memories of eating snow cones when I was a child. My brother and I had a hand-cranked ice crusher toy shaped like a snow man that we often used on hot summer days to make our own snow cones.

About Me

I live in Western PA. I have been working on my genealogy since 2007 or so. I became interested when closing my fathers belonging and wondering about the papers I had found related to my ancestors.
If you are related to any of my ancestors, please email me
cjsperl@gmail.com